Your Destiny
You are God’s child. He saw you, picked you, and placed you. “You did not choose me; I chose you” (John 15:16 NCV). Before you are a butcher, baker, or cabinetmaker, male or female, Asian or black, you are God’s child. Replacement or fill-in? Hardly. You are His first choice.
Such isn’t always the case in life. Once, just minutes before I officiated a wedding, the groom leaned over to me and said, “You weren’t my first choice.”
“I wasn’t?”
“No, the preacher I wanted couldn’t make it.”
“Oh.”
“But thanks for filling in.”
“Sure. Anytime.” I considered signing the marriage license “Substitute.”
You’ll never hear such words from God. He chose you. The choice wasn’t obligatory, required, compulsory, forced, or co
mpelled. He selected you because he wanted to. You are his open, willful, voluntary choice. He walked onto the auction block where you stood, and he proclaimed, “This child is mine.” And he bought you “with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot” (I Peter 1:19). You are God’s child.
You are his child forever.
Don’t believe the tombstone. You are more than a dash between two dates. “When this tent we live in—our body here on earth—is torn down, God will have a house in heaven for us to live in, a home he himself has made, which will last forever” (2 Cor. 5:1 TEV). Don’t get sucked into short-term thinking. Your struggles will not last forever, but you will.
God will have his Eden. He is creating a garden in which Adams and Eves will share in his likeness and love, at peace with each other, animals, and nature. We will rule with him over lands, cities, and nations. “If we endure, we shall also reign with Him” (2 Tim. 2:12).
Believe this. Clutch it. Tattoo it on the interior of your heart. It may seem that the calamity sucked your life out to sea, but it hasn’t. You still have your destiny.
From You’ll Get Through This ©2013 Max Lucado (Thomas Nelson) Used by permission.
